There's a few good ideas and designs sprinkled throughout the game, but otherwise it's so incredibly bland and uninspired. Like if there was two additional years of development and this foundation was fleshed out and refined, this could have been a good game.
Five of the six Pokémon on my team were new to this generation, because I actually quite liked some of them. However, I caught most early on and then basically kept the same team throughout the entire game, as I didn't feel much incentive to "catching them all". Despite these early pickups lacking various typing coverages, I was still able to breeze through the game pretty easily.
Most components of the game had the issue of being okay but unpolished. The one component that stands out as the most egregious however is the game's story. You spend almost the entirety of the game with no real antagonist organization, and when it does finally show up, it's over pretty quickly. There's some lore dropped throughout, but it's all very basic.
If this game released even just a decade ago, it would have probably gotten away with having these flaws and with being incredibly boring, but this series continues to coast and be left in the dust of more modern RPGs and games in general.
Five of the six Pokémon on my team were new to this generation, because I actually quite liked some of them. However, I caught most early on and then basically kept the same team throughout the entire game, as I didn't feel much incentive to "catching them all". Despite these early pickups lacking various typing coverages, I was still able to breeze through the game pretty easily.
Most components of the game had the issue of being okay but unpolished. The one component that stands out as the most egregious however is the game's story. You spend almost the entirety of the game with no real antagonist organization, and when it does finally show up, it's over pretty quickly. There's some lore dropped throughout, but it's all very basic.
If this game released even just a decade ago, it would have probably gotten away with having these flaws and with being incredibly boring, but this series continues to coast and be left in the dust of more modern RPGs and games in general.
Better than expected overall. Found many of the cities quite good-looking and I liked the gyms being stadiums. Dynamax are kinda lame though compared to Megas and Z-moves but still it was a decent game. Just hope we had more wild areas, clearly the best part of the game. Could be so much better of course, but it was not as bad as I was expecting.
Some of this review might be contextualised by the fact that this is my first Pokemon game (unless you count a brief foray into DS spin-off Blue Rescue Team when I was too young to really comprehend what I was doing) - as a result, I might not always know which complaints or compliments are SWSH-specific or apply to the series in general. On top of that, I ended up shelving this game once I hit the Dark gym because it just wasn't keeping my attention much anymore and I was getting distracted by other games, so all of my thoughts are based on the game up to that point.
I probably did like this more than most, likely as a result of it being my first, but even I grew tired of the extreme hand-holding at the beginning. Now, I personally don't like being dropped in a game with no indication of what to do - I'm autistic, so I like clear instructions - but this was pretty stifling. You'd get a dialogue telling you to go to X place down Y road, walk ten steps down said road, get interrupted by another dialogue telling you X place is up ahead, walk another ten steps, get interrupted by another dialogue telling you you've reached X place and how exciting that is, etc.
I enjoyed the Wild Area, though it quickly lost its novelty to me as it still contains the same general kinds of Pokemon and after you've caught those it's very rare to find a new kind you don't already have there.
The characters weren't very gripping; the most interesting ones to me were probably Bede, Nessa, and Kabu, but even then the latter two mostly stood out to me for their designs rather than their actual characterisation or actions.
There were some genuinely beautiful locations, such as Ballonlea, and I don't fully understand the criticism of graphics, but again that might be down to this being my only experience with Pokemon thus far.
I liked the Dynamax/Gigantamax thing well enough, mostly for the sake of playing around with different Pokemon and seeing what they looked like with it, but as a gimmick in itself it's just okay.
The game did motivate me to get more into Pokemon and go back to some of the older games, and I did discover a genuine love for catching and collecting Pokemon and filling out my Dex (which makes the Dex cut a little disappointing even for me as a newcomer), so I'll be doing that sometime for sure.
Maybe I'll get back to this someday, though it's not a super appealing thought as of right now. I'd restart and begin fresh, but the concept of trudging through all the hand-holding at the beginning again is putting me off.
I probably did like this more than most, likely as a result of it being my first, but even I grew tired of the extreme hand-holding at the beginning. Now, I personally don't like being dropped in a game with no indication of what to do - I'm autistic, so I like clear instructions - but this was pretty stifling. You'd get a dialogue telling you to go to X place down Y road, walk ten steps down said road, get interrupted by another dialogue telling you X place is up ahead, walk another ten steps, get interrupted by another dialogue telling you you've reached X place and how exciting that is, etc.
I enjoyed the Wild Area, though it quickly lost its novelty to me as it still contains the same general kinds of Pokemon and after you've caught those it's very rare to find a new kind you don't already have there.
The characters weren't very gripping; the most interesting ones to me were probably Bede, Nessa, and Kabu, but even then the latter two mostly stood out to me for their designs rather than their actual characterisation or actions.
There were some genuinely beautiful locations, such as Ballonlea, and I don't fully understand the criticism of graphics, but again that might be down to this being my only experience with Pokemon thus far.
I liked the Dynamax/Gigantamax thing well enough, mostly for the sake of playing around with different Pokemon and seeing what they looked like with it, but as a gimmick in itself it's just okay.
The game did motivate me to get more into Pokemon and go back to some of the older games, and I did discover a genuine love for catching and collecting Pokemon and filling out my Dex (which makes the Dex cut a little disappointing even for me as a newcomer), so I'll be doing that sometime for sure.
Maybe I'll get back to this someday, though it's not a super appealing thought as of right now. I'd restart and begin fresh, but the concept of trudging through all the hand-holding at the beginning again is putting me off.
people shit on this but it's a great Pokémon game; extremely clean art design, at times a phenomenal story, with some of the best music in recent memory.
Got called slurs on Twitter for implying I expected more out of the highest grossing media franchise of all time's debut on home console
Unfortunately kind of mediocre.
I don’t care what people say about gen 8, I loved the shit out of the games. I loved dynamax battles, and this felt like a good pokémon game, very very overhated.
PEOPLE WITH LONG HAIR CAN WEAR HATS!! Stupid European regulations.
Pokémon Sw/Sh was a good start for the mainline series on the Switch. Having already played Let's Go Pikachu, which was a hybrid mainline/GO game, I was happy to get a standard Pokémon game that had new mechanics with Dynamax/Gigantamax Pokémon and of course new creatures to capture and trade. I enjoyed this game, but PL: Arceus is the best Switch Pokémon title imo.
The game came out with many divisive topics, but I wanted to give it a good chance. Overall though, as of now this sits as one of my least favorite mainline games. Combining the worst elements of the last two generations, and adding a couple more I disagree with.
To discuss, the graphics, they aren't up to the standard provided by the Switch's first party library, I am unsure if there were bugs but everything looks incredibly fuzzy on console whenever I attempted to play docked, as if the resolution had not been changed, this is without discussing the lackluster wild area.
In terms of gameplay. there were many changes that I wasn't happy with. Although probably in the minority. Random battles were never exciting since every battle was intentionally entered or a nuisance. This meant I ran from almost every battle not encompassing a new pokemon to catch. Because of this change, I also felt like routes were less exciting, which may coincide with the shorter amount in the game overall. Since I never found it necessary to train all my pokemon equally thanks to the always-on exp share, I actually found myself caring less about my pokemon, and sticking to a couple of power houses for anything but type advantages. Even playing this way, I never found myself in dire shape.
Although the story felt just as stop and start as pokemon sun and moon, there were some interesting ideas presented with the gym leaders, and the last area. Although. in the end. the game diminished these by making these points extremely easy.
What I can say is the the music is great as always, and even if you do skip this game. I do suggest giving it a listen.
Honestly, I can't give the game a recommendation as it doesn't excel in anything the series is known for. You would do better to go back and try an older game to get a probable better experience.
====================================================
This was reviewed in 2019 and this game actively killed any enthusiasm for further pokemon. As in the game was so against my enjoyment of Pokemon lasting from Generation 1 (A continuous player), that I am no longer excited for new Pokemon games.
To discuss, the graphics, they aren't up to the standard provided by the Switch's first party library, I am unsure if there were bugs but everything looks incredibly fuzzy on console whenever I attempted to play docked, as if the resolution had not been changed, this is without discussing the lackluster wild area.
In terms of gameplay. there were many changes that I wasn't happy with. Although probably in the minority. Random battles were never exciting since every battle was intentionally entered or a nuisance. This meant I ran from almost every battle not encompassing a new pokemon to catch. Because of this change, I also felt like routes were less exciting, which may coincide with the shorter amount in the game overall. Since I never found it necessary to train all my pokemon equally thanks to the always-on exp share, I actually found myself caring less about my pokemon, and sticking to a couple of power houses for anything but type advantages. Even playing this way, I never found myself in dire shape.
Although the story felt just as stop and start as pokemon sun and moon, there were some interesting ideas presented with the gym leaders, and the last area. Although. in the end. the game diminished these by making these points extremely easy.
What I can say is the the music is great as always, and even if you do skip this game. I do suggest giving it a listen.
Honestly, I can't give the game a recommendation as it doesn't excel in anything the series is known for. You would do better to go back and try an older game to get a probable better experience.
====================================================
This was reviewed in 2019 and this game actively killed any enthusiasm for further pokemon. As in the game was so against my enjoyment of Pokemon lasting from Generation 1 (A continuous player), that I am no longer excited for new Pokemon games.
This is why Game Freak needs a complete revamp, this game has no pacing and no likable characters. Hop might just be the most annoying character in existence, interrupting your journey every step of the way.
I do like many of the new Pokemon designs and find it to be one of the strongest generations in recent times. But the game itself is just not up to modern standards.
I do like many of the new Pokemon designs and find it to be one of the strongest generations in recent times. But the game itself is just not up to modern standards.
Game gets a lot of undue hate. Most fun I've had with a Pokemon game in some time. Has the best Champion battle in the franchise.
amazing i love this game i feel the same way about acnh
personally i enjoy this bad game
boring as hell
Pokémon Shield may have been the Pokémon game straw to break my back of tolerance for mediocrity. I grew up loving the first three generations of Pokémon, and I really enjoyed my time with the games through X and Y, but rather than launching forward on the Switch, Pokémon Shield marked a clear backslide for the franchise.
After completing the fifth gym, I resigned myself to simply “getting through” this game. The story was more forgettable than usual—Team Yell is more of a joke than an actual enemy, and the towns made great first impressions only to be unmasked at empty shells as I walked into the seventh “painted door” in each one... The story never made me explore the cities the way Blue/Red and Gold/Silver did, and it often felt like that was true only because GameFreak couldn’t fill the cities with unique substance in the 3D engine.
The biggest problem I realized while playing this game, however, is that Pokémon has now reached that troubling point in every franchise where it no longer motivates the player within the game, but counts on the player’s compulsions from previous entries in the franchise... My team was set after the third gym and did not change except for one Pokémon in the late game. I never felt like it was necessary to explore the Wild Area, and I completely forgot it even existed during the grind of badges 4-“8.” This game was more Pokémon for everyone who wanted more, but for someone looking to be revitalized in my love for the franchise, this fell completely flat. I’m sad to have reached this point, but I sure am glad this particular journey is over.
After completing the fifth gym, I resigned myself to simply “getting through” this game. The story was more forgettable than usual—Team Yell is more of a joke than an actual enemy, and the towns made great first impressions only to be unmasked at empty shells as I walked into the seventh “painted door” in each one... The story never made me explore the cities the way Blue/Red and Gold/Silver did, and it often felt like that was true only because GameFreak couldn’t fill the cities with unique substance in the 3D engine.
The biggest problem I realized while playing this game, however, is that Pokémon has now reached that troubling point in every franchise where it no longer motivates the player within the game, but counts on the player’s compulsions from previous entries in the franchise... My team was set after the third gym and did not change except for one Pokémon in the late game. I never felt like it was necessary to explore the Wild Area, and I completely forgot it even existed during the grind of badges 4-“8.” This game was more Pokémon for everyone who wanted more, but for someone looking to be revitalized in my love for the franchise, this fell completely flat. I’m sad to have reached this point, but I sure am glad this particular journey is over.
whenever by husband thinks about this game (bought it for him for his birthday) he gets very sad
Dlc is good but I think I'd rather watch sword art online again than ever replay the main game
Hey at least it’s better than Pokemon Sword
Such a beautiful game, yet so ugly at the same time.
This review contains spoilers
The two stars are there because the Pokémon designs are great, the trainer designs are great, and Hop has a great character arc.
Everything else is rubbish.
Galar is an ugly region, and half of its routes consist of straight lines. The game that decided to make the Escape Rope a Key Item has ONE cave in the entire region, and it too is a straight line. Team Yell are a non-entity that feel like a pale imitation of Team Skull without understanding anything that made them good or memorable. Marnie and Bead get almost no screentime, their character arcs happen offscreen, and are both completely unrelated to anything we're introduced to them caring about. Marnie gets forced into taking over as her town's gym leader despite the whole game expressing that she had zero interest in the role, and Bede gets kidnapped by a witch and brainwashed into believing Fairy-type Pokémon are the only thing he has ever thought or cared about.
Zacian and Zamazenta have no place in the greater world of Pokemon for being box legendaries, Eternatus has zero story attached to it outside of a few lines of dialogue involving a dream of an energy crisis, and the game's BIGGEST sin is missing the entire point of Pokemon: that anyone can participate.
The whole game the player character is constantly being told that they should focus on their gym challenge instead of getting involved with whatever shady plot seems to be happening in the background, that the game makes zero effort to detail in the slightest, or give us any glimpse of. Nothing happens the entire game until the last ten minutes of it, which comprise of an elevator ride into a non-encounter, and a final boss that had decent spectacle but was ultimately devoid of player input.
EXP share has been made to be ON by default at all times, and as a result, if the player at any point decides to catch new Pokemon in the new Wild Area, or does any sort of battling outside of the main straight line that is the gym challenge, you will became hopelessly overleveled with no way of course correcting without picking a completely new team, and will steamroll the rest of the game with little issue, robbing the game of any tension for the rest of its meager playtime.
The game's new gimmick, Dynamaxing, is essentially just another take on the prior game's Z-Moves. Unlike Mega Evolution, any Pokémon can do it, and you get three turns to either use big powerful attacks or guard against big powerful attacks. There's some strategy to using certain moves to lay down weather or stat boosts, but visually they're a step down and mechanically they lead to forcing the other player into activating theirs just to avoid losing their whole team strategy to funny supermoves.
There's also 'Gigantamax' forms, which have unique appearances, but ONLY while that Pokemon is dynamaxed, and prior to the soup introduced in the DLC they method of obtaining a Gigantamax Pokemon was laughably absurd to a degree I don't have the energy to rant about right now. I'll just say that Raid Battles sucked - either you got absolutely wiped playing solo cause the AI partners were useless, or you steamrolled the fight playing with a human squad with zero difficulty, still hindered by the fact that you can only do a set amount of damage max to the boss before it caps and enters another of like 5 phases. Just a colossal waste of time.
Lastly, thanks to the decision to leave the National Pokedex out of this installment and future ones to come, more than half of the franchise's mons are completely unusable even with Pokemon Home support, which limits post-game teambuilding to whatever's available in the region.
Sword and Shield, in my opinion, are the most hollow, phoned-in, devoid of soul Pokemon games in the entire franchise, and it speaks volumes that at the used game store I work you'll find copies of these titles taking up an entire shelf themselves.
Everything else is rubbish.
Galar is an ugly region, and half of its routes consist of straight lines. The game that decided to make the Escape Rope a Key Item has ONE cave in the entire region, and it too is a straight line. Team Yell are a non-entity that feel like a pale imitation of Team Skull without understanding anything that made them good or memorable. Marnie and Bead get almost no screentime, their character arcs happen offscreen, and are both completely unrelated to anything we're introduced to them caring about. Marnie gets forced into taking over as her town's gym leader despite the whole game expressing that she had zero interest in the role, and Bede gets kidnapped by a witch and brainwashed into believing Fairy-type Pokémon are the only thing he has ever thought or cared about.
Zacian and Zamazenta have no place in the greater world of Pokemon for being box legendaries, Eternatus has zero story attached to it outside of a few lines of dialogue involving a dream of an energy crisis, and the game's BIGGEST sin is missing the entire point of Pokemon: that anyone can participate.
The whole game the player character is constantly being told that they should focus on their gym challenge instead of getting involved with whatever shady plot seems to be happening in the background, that the game makes zero effort to detail in the slightest, or give us any glimpse of. Nothing happens the entire game until the last ten minutes of it, which comprise of an elevator ride into a non-encounter, and a final boss that had decent spectacle but was ultimately devoid of player input.
EXP share has been made to be ON by default at all times, and as a result, if the player at any point decides to catch new Pokemon in the new Wild Area, or does any sort of battling outside of the main straight line that is the gym challenge, you will became hopelessly overleveled with no way of course correcting without picking a completely new team, and will steamroll the rest of the game with little issue, robbing the game of any tension for the rest of its meager playtime.
The game's new gimmick, Dynamaxing, is essentially just another take on the prior game's Z-Moves. Unlike Mega Evolution, any Pokémon can do it, and you get three turns to either use big powerful attacks or guard against big powerful attacks. There's some strategy to using certain moves to lay down weather or stat boosts, but visually they're a step down and mechanically they lead to forcing the other player into activating theirs just to avoid losing their whole team strategy to funny supermoves.
There's also 'Gigantamax' forms, which have unique appearances, but ONLY while that Pokemon is dynamaxed, and prior to the soup introduced in the DLC they method of obtaining a Gigantamax Pokemon was laughably absurd to a degree I don't have the energy to rant about right now. I'll just say that Raid Battles sucked - either you got absolutely wiped playing solo cause the AI partners were useless, or you steamrolled the fight playing with a human squad with zero difficulty, still hindered by the fact that you can only do a set amount of damage max to the boss before it caps and enters another of like 5 phases. Just a colossal waste of time.
Lastly, thanks to the decision to leave the National Pokedex out of this installment and future ones to come, more than half of the franchise's mons are completely unusable even with Pokemon Home support, which limits post-game teambuilding to whatever's available in the region.
Sword and Shield, in my opinion, are the most hollow, phoned-in, devoid of soul Pokemon games in the entire franchise, and it speaks volumes that at the used game store I work you'll find copies of these titles taking up an entire shelf themselves.
[Biased review warning]
Perhaps not the most acclaimed Pokémon game in the franchise, but it is my favourite! Me and my best friend have this tradition where we play this game every new year; we start when the clock hits 12:00, and we don't stop playing until we've beaten the champion. It's a tradition that I keep close and dear to my heart.
All the towns have a gorgeous visual aesthetic, and they feel unique. The wild area they introduced here is also a welcome addition, as it breaks up the game a bit, and lets the player roam freely, on bike or on foot, and chill out and take in the stunning landscapes. The pokémon dens which reside here are really fun, as well!
The broad assortment of clothing and customisation options here are entertaining to play around with. Each town has a boutique with a unique set of clothes, so it's fun to collect them whenever you visit the location for the first time!
Overall, a fun experience, definitely one of the better pokémon games in recent memory.
Perhaps not the most acclaimed Pokémon game in the franchise, but it is my favourite! Me and my best friend have this tradition where we play this game every new year; we start when the clock hits 12:00, and we don't stop playing until we've beaten the champion. It's a tradition that I keep close and dear to my heart.
All the towns have a gorgeous visual aesthetic, and they feel unique. The wild area they introduced here is also a welcome addition, as it breaks up the game a bit, and lets the player roam freely, on bike or on foot, and chill out and take in the stunning landscapes. The pokémon dens which reside here are really fun, as well!
The broad assortment of clothing and customisation options here are entertaining to play around with. Each town has a boutique with a unique set of clothes, so it's fun to collect them whenever you visit the location for the first time!
Overall, a fun experience, definitely one of the better pokémon games in recent memory.
this game is very bad
The little things in this game are what do it for me. All the weird little npc dialogue, the touches of personality it gives to random bypassers, the extremely lively and rich designs for the gym leaders (melony please call me).
I’ve got my pet peeves with it but a lot of the big complaints aren’t stuff that really get in the way of my enjoyment, and a lot of the newer ideas and concepts it brings out are ones I really like.
I’ve got my pet peeves with it but a lot of the big complaints aren’t stuff that really get in the way of my enjoyment, and a lot of the newer ideas and concepts it brings out are ones I really like.
É um game complicado de dar review. Eu gosto muito dele, mas ele é muito falho, história rasa e curta, dificuldade tão simples que até uma criança iria reclamar, e bastante conteúdo que foi cortado só pra ser colocado em DLC. O jogo tem um belo trabalho em design de personagens, cada um tendo uma personalidade, uma trilha sonora belíssima, que te deixa bem hypado na batalha de ginásio só pra você dar uma lapada e vencer sem perder um Pokémon sequer, e design de cenário que são até que bem feitos por mais que sejam bem longe de ser o melhor da franquia.
Real life trees aren't pretty either, shut the hell up.
Warning: Wall of Text
Controversial take up front: The "Dexit" was actually a great thing and I really wish they would remove more bloat from the games. Who fucking cares if Stantler is not in the game, get over yourself. Use something you've never used before. People who transfer Pokémon they used previously into a brand new game file are weirdos tbh.
Anyway... Sword and Shield definitely have some good aspects to them, but thoroughly disappoint with the execution.
- I liked the setting, with the Gym battles growing more and more in popularity, more people recognizing you, etc.
- Lots of great Pokémon designs.
- I loved that Regional Variants returned, as I was concerned that it'd stay a Gen 7 thing only. Even better, they also added Variants of Pokémon outside of Gen 1.
- Obtaining Pokémon that can be used in competitive fights is now easier than ever, thanks to Raids and items that change a Pokémon's Nature or Ability, for example.
- Some Characters are charming and have decent writing, while others have completely nonsensical writing or an obviously lacking/lackluster character arc.
The thing is: Pokémon games don't need a good story to be fun at all. But the fact that they obviously tried to write one but failed in almost all aspects makes its existence very grating and leaves you with a bitter taste once you finish the main story, and possibly also during some post-game stuff. It's just... so bad... It's extremely obvious that they ran out of time to flesh out anything in the ending.
There's plenty of other parts of the game where you can practically feel the crunch that Game Freak was very obviously forced to work under, whether it's obviously cut content or severe lack of polish of existing content.
Graphically, the games borders on amateurish. Ugly textures, stiff animations for some Pokémon and NPCs (especially cutscenes), FPS issues. The Wild Area is conceptually a nice idea, but the way Pokémon just pop up 3 meters in front of you is awful. Yes, I get that it'd be tons of work to optimize it, making a low LOD model for each Pokémon or whatever. At that point I'd rather just not have the Wild Area at all. But you gotta have cool features to advertise your game I guess!
Sadly, there still is many things I can complain about:
- The terribly obvious, grating lack of any sort of voice acting. Especially since there are several cutscenes that focus on a character speaking or even worse, singing. Can one of the most successful videogame franchises in the world really not afford to have JUST SOME voice acting in a mainline game?
- The Online functions were awful. Terrible to navigate, stupidly hard to play together with friends.
- Gigantamax is just another tacked on marketing feature that will be forgotten and irrelevant in the next game.
- Speaking of Gigantamax: Raids made it especially obvious how fucking s l o w the fights are whenever status effects of any sort happen. Fighting a Raid Pokémon with Intimidate means that you'll have to wait a fucking minute before you can perform any action because it has to play the animation for EVERY SINGLE POKÉMON and then have the dialog for "X's attack fell!" pop up for EVERY SINGLE POKÉMON AGAIN. PLEASE, make a toggable fast-mode for this shit.
- Some Pokémon are ridiculously hard to catch/find - and they are usually not even good. I really wanted to use a Solosis but it had stupidly specific conditions to appear. And then there is shit like Runerigus. WHY?
- Forced EXP share. I tried to be open to the idea and used a team of 12 Pokémon instead of 6 and rotated them in and out, but I rather wouldn't have needed to. Also I was still overleved most of the time lol
- And last but not least, one of the worst and most annoying "features" is level restrictions for catching Pokémon. Once a Pokémon is JUST ONE SINGLE LEVEL above your current(!) mon, it's near IMPOSSIBLE to catch. What the fuck? Yes, I get that they didn't want people to catch something 20 level above their current adequate level to steamroll everything. But surely that shouldn't stop anyone from catching a level 13 Pokémon when most of my team is level 15 and my leading Pokémon happened to be level 12?? Absolutely infuriating bullshit feature implemented in the least elegant way possible.
In the end, it sadly still is a Pokémon game, so people will buy it - including myself, full price and all. I love Pokémon, I really do. But it's been obvious for several generations that they let Game Freak - still a relatively small company - work on a shoestring budget to produce mainline games for one of the biggest and highest grossing video game franchises in the whole world. That grade of greed is just sad, but sadly it works.
Controversial take up front: The "Dexit" was actually a great thing and I really wish they would remove more bloat from the games. Who fucking cares if Stantler is not in the game, get over yourself. Use something you've never used before. People who transfer Pokémon they used previously into a brand new game file are weirdos tbh.
Anyway... Sword and Shield definitely have some good aspects to them, but thoroughly disappoint with the execution.
- I liked the setting, with the Gym battles growing more and more in popularity, more people recognizing you, etc.
- Lots of great Pokémon designs.
- I loved that Regional Variants returned, as I was concerned that it'd stay a Gen 7 thing only. Even better, they also added Variants of Pokémon outside of Gen 1.
- Obtaining Pokémon that can be used in competitive fights is now easier than ever, thanks to Raids and items that change a Pokémon's Nature or Ability, for example.
- Some Characters are charming and have decent writing, while others have completely nonsensical writing or an obviously lacking/lackluster character arc.
The thing is: Pokémon games don't need a good story to be fun at all. But the fact that they obviously tried to write one but failed in almost all aspects makes its existence very grating and leaves you with a bitter taste once you finish the main story, and possibly also during some post-game stuff. It's just... so bad... It's extremely obvious that they ran out of time to flesh out anything in the ending.
There's plenty of other parts of the game where you can practically feel the crunch that Game Freak was very obviously forced to work under, whether it's obviously cut content or severe lack of polish of existing content.
Graphically, the games borders on amateurish. Ugly textures, stiff animations for some Pokémon and NPCs (especially cutscenes), FPS issues. The Wild Area is conceptually a nice idea, but the way Pokémon just pop up 3 meters in front of you is awful. Yes, I get that it'd be tons of work to optimize it, making a low LOD model for each Pokémon or whatever. At that point I'd rather just not have the Wild Area at all. But you gotta have cool features to advertise your game I guess!
Sadly, there still is many things I can complain about:
- The terribly obvious, grating lack of any sort of voice acting. Especially since there are several cutscenes that focus on a character speaking or even worse, singing. Can one of the most successful videogame franchises in the world really not afford to have JUST SOME voice acting in a mainline game?
- The Online functions were awful. Terrible to navigate, stupidly hard to play together with friends.
- Gigantamax is just another tacked on marketing feature that will be forgotten and irrelevant in the next game.
- Speaking of Gigantamax: Raids made it especially obvious how fucking s l o w the fights are whenever status effects of any sort happen. Fighting a Raid Pokémon with Intimidate means that you'll have to wait a fucking minute before you can perform any action because it has to play the animation for EVERY SINGLE POKÉMON and then have the dialog for "X's attack fell!" pop up for EVERY SINGLE POKÉMON AGAIN. PLEASE, make a toggable fast-mode for this shit.
- Some Pokémon are ridiculously hard to catch/find - and they are usually not even good. I really wanted to use a Solosis but it had stupidly specific conditions to appear. And then there is shit like Runerigus. WHY?
- Forced EXP share. I tried to be open to the idea and used a team of 12 Pokémon instead of 6 and rotated them in and out, but I rather wouldn't have needed to. Also I was still overleved most of the time lol
- And last but not least, one of the worst and most annoying "features" is level restrictions for catching Pokémon. Once a Pokémon is JUST ONE SINGLE LEVEL above your current(!) mon, it's near IMPOSSIBLE to catch. What the fuck? Yes, I get that they didn't want people to catch something 20 level above their current adequate level to steamroll everything. But surely that shouldn't stop anyone from catching a level 13 Pokémon when most of my team is level 15 and my leading Pokémon happened to be level 12?? Absolutely infuriating bullshit feature implemented in the least elegant way possible.
In the end, it sadly still is a Pokémon game, so people will buy it - including myself, full price and all. I love Pokémon, I really do. But it's been obvious for several generations that they let Game Freak - still a relatively small company - work on a shoestring budget to produce mainline games for one of the biggest and highest grossing video game franchises in the whole world. That grade of greed is just sad, but sadly it works.
What happened to pokemon, man.
Probably the worst generation. Also national dex, what gives?
I love this game.